


The Multiverse Theory

by canibecandid



Category: MCU, The Avengers, Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU: Artists, AU: Different Time/Different Place, AU: Gods and Monsters, AU: Pirates, AU: Soulmates, AU: Swap, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Death, Minor Character Death, Multi, canon type violence, vague mentions of ptsd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-06-05 09:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6699118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canibecandid/pseuds/canibecandid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Certain scientific theories indicate that there are multiple worlds; places we could have been, people we should have met, and lives that we could have had.<br/>Maybe, just maybe, in just one universe Steve and Darcy could tell each other 'I love you' and they'd be ready for it...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Glimpse of the future

**Author's Note:**

> Will update once a week, firm; 6 chapters.

He meets her in Stark’s lab, dreaming and drawing the future. A future rooted in science and in her own two hands, and wicked shade of red painted on her lips with not a care in the world for the smudges on her glasses and the dab of motor oil on her cheek.  
He can always tell which tools she’s used, flecks of nail polish littering the grips because she was too impatient to let them dry properly. Fingers itching and a mind bursting with ideas.

They laugh and talk in the noisy lab, the sounds of machines being built and a future that almost seems real as their background music.

She hates being sidelined to a repairmen on the USO tour, but he can't help but feel happy that she’s here with him; their shared hunger for more and to be more linger in the whispers in the night.

He draws her sometimes. The furrow of her brow as she grumbles over a truck’s parts. Capturing her sly grin and a wink over a table. His heart hammers in his ears when she presses a soft kiss to his cheek, her steady hands faltering as she wipes away the faint trace of red she had left behind.

With his new found strength he can hold her in midair for hours on end as she tightens bolts and whacks in a few more nails. It’s a practice for the motorcycle, he tells her, but he enjoys the way she whoops with laughter and surprise each and every time he picks her up.

She teaches him how to play cards, counting them, and the others laugh as Darcy rakes in their stipends and rations. There's always an underlying amount of bitterness in her smirk that they’ll never take her seriously. Not her card playing or her mechanic skills.  
There’s always a little extra irritation and fight that she takes out on the dippy little punching bag that had been given to him. Her form is terrible, but her stance is getting better at least. He’ll coach her a little, let her work out the anger and frustration that he knew just as well.  
He tells her about the little guy from Brooklyn. Her eyes soften and grow distant when he tells her about how he used to be. She’ll laugh at stories about how Bucky dragged him out of fights and scraps by the collar of his shirt.

Steve doesn't even back down when she says it sounds like love. She’s not wrong, it's something, but it hardly matters with the war.  
Darcy doesn't tease him about it; she’s witty, not cruel. It helps that she’ll gaze at the chorus girls and whisper to him in dark corners, that he’s not the only one lost in his thoughts and desires.

Then he gets the news.

 _Bucky, taken_.

And when he leaves the tour, she's there. She knows, of course she would, that he would go after Bucky. Her eyes are wet and there’s no fierce slash of red on her lips as she just tosses him the keys and turns her back.  
She didn't see him do it, she can't confirm something she didn't see; it’s better for them that way.  
And it’s a small pang of regret that he never sees her again. There’s never any time in a war and too many casualties to wonder where she could be if she was anywhere at all.

He thinks of her briefly as the plane goes down and the water starts to chill his body. He imagines her laughter mingled with Peggy’s. He wonders if they would have liked each other. The life he could have had, the loves he’s lost, and things he’d left unsaid. His lungs burn and the world around him goes black.

The future he wakes up in is somehow everything he had dreamed it would be and nothing he wanted. Streets were crowded and too loud, the noises grating over him. Too sensitized by his surroundings, the doctors in the lab had told him. The time on ice must have just been white noise humming in the background.

Steve doesn't believe a word of it, but it made just as much sense as surviving all that time on ice.  
There’s no home to go to for him, he doesn't say anything but Howard’s son guesses as much and offers him a place to stay.

And that’s how he sees her again.

Lips in a sharp grin and painted red, her glasses riding high on her nose. It feels like he’s being welcomed home, so he stands in front of the portrait.  
He glances at the name platelet, side eyeing the portrait of Howard that loomed next hers.

“Lucky dog.”  
_Darcy Maria Stark 1922-1971_

 


	2. Seas of the Past

It’s a dark night when Hydra takes James Barnes from his home. His wife, the city’s finest seamstress, left with a gash running down her cheek.

_For the good of the country. For the good of the world._

Darcy bought a pistol the next day, fashioning a holster right at her hip for all to see. Try to take me, she dared. No one had to know that the gun was empty.   
Steven taught her to shoot anyway, just as James had taught him.

Darcy took to the lessons well, fed him, and gave him a place of refuge that wasn't the barracks.   
He thinks of her when he boards the ships, bringing back small tokens and trinkets to her store.

There’s a rumor that they’re indecent, that mourning should take longer, but it means nothing to him as she cradles the pretty baubles in her hands with a delighted smile.

It’s at an auction where they find him again, Darcy throwing herself at the keeper's feet, crying and thrashing. It took everything they had, every penny to purchase James’s freedom.

The night terrors consumed him, as much as they tried to help, contorting everything. He rampaged through the village, broken windows, setting to fire anything he could lay his torch to; to ensure he’d always be free.  
In the end, it was the once empty pistol that had ended James Barnes life.

_For the good of the country. For the good of the world._

The kingdom fed them lies and swill that she was unwilling to take anymore; so she a stole captain's log. In secret, she told him of her plan; Darcy would hunt each and every man listed on the log and any other connection she could find to Hydra.

He couldn't defy the king, put the entire village at risk for one person, not after all they had lost, but he let her slip away in the shadows of the night. One last lingering kiss of words that could never be said is their final parting gift to each other.

Whispers come in from the sea of a pirate captain hunting slaver ships, burning their hulls at sea, tying any ship backers to the helms to make an example.

Heads come to the king in baskets, messages written on paper nailed to the tongues. They all read the same thing.  
 _For the good of the country. For the good of the world._

Bounties are placed, but the _Bifrost_ remains uncatchable; the winds are always in their favor, the stars are just another language they speak, and cannons that never miss.  
Head after head, delivered to the door of the king and to the new Captain.

Steven knows what the note will say, knows the gossip among his men.

_For the good of the country. For the good of the world._

There's blood in the water and cannons ringing in the air, swords clash on deck, and God his lungs sting from the saltwater.

It’s the high pitched war cry of woman that draws him back into the fight, watching her bring down an axe on a suffering chain link.

“By order and decree of the law-” Steve started to choke out, but was met with a pistol pointed directly at his temple.

“The law can suckle my teat for all I care.” Black coal smeared around her forehead and eyes, giving her a frightening appearance, blue eyes dancing in the chaos. “And I obviously have plenty to go around.”

He meets the butt of her pistol with a grunt, hauling himself back up to his feet. She eyes him, obviously reassessing him.

“Thor, release the rest of the prisoners. Take the wounded to Cho and the rest to Jane.”

Steve nervously eyed the hulking blond haired man as he glided down the stairs, lugging a massive hammer that snapped the chain easily.

“Eyes back to me.” The click of the pistol trigger brings his eyes to her. “Sloppy of you, Captain Rogers.”

“It doesn't have to be this way.” He could take her down, his size giving him the upper mhand, but he knew her marksmanship. He knew her once, even before she was the lovely seamstress with the pistol at her hip, and long before she was a pirate queen. Can remember the way the curve of her hip felt under his hand and the taste of her lips. “You could turn yourself over. Give back what you’ve stolen.”

And for second she hesitates before firing the bullet down into shoulder. If he cried out in pain, he can't hear it. Everything is on fire. Everything burns.

“They aren't goods, Steven. Not textiles, rum or sugar cane. They are people.” She fires another shot into his knee. “And they are free.”

There's a ringing in his ears as the boat shakes back and forth, like the very sea is carrying the ferocity of her crew. Back and forth, the ship careens with the wind and lightning rolls across the sky. Their voices howling louder than the wind.

_"For the good of the country! For the good of the world_!"


	3. Here and Now

  
“I can't believe I'm sitting across from Captain America.” It’s said like a prayer and a dream, mixed in with the scraping of a lab stool and the enthusiasm it also feels like a death sentence for the senses.

It takes a minute to work up the PR _Grin and Wink_...

“How does it feel to be a feminist icon in a time where women in the United States were not largely welcome on the battlefield, much less lead their own command?”

Darcy’s intelligent reply was to falter and go “huh?”

Steven Rogers, Jane Foster’s lab assistant, flips open a notebook and writing questions in short hand.

“I guess it was an honor? So many people, of _my_ people, were dying. Couldn't see beyond the want for people to live and the war to be over.” The words feel heavy on her tongue.

“As in American people?”

“Jewish. I’m Jewish.” She taps his notebook. “Put that in. People never want to remember that, always painted me like a shiksa. Pegs would say a nazi got their wings for every poster where they fixed my nose up.”

“Pegs? Is that Margaret Carter?”

Darcy closed her eyes and sent a prayer skywards. “Somewhere, Peggy feels the need to kick a shin and can't figure out why.” She muttered before leaning on the table and looking him in the eye.

“You ready? Because I don't give a rats ass if it's a paper or a book. You want a story, you’re getting the whole one.”

“Boy, I was scrawnier than you are now and I could have blown away if the breeze kicked up.”  
He makes a face that she barely catches from the corner of her eye. She frowns heavily and eyes him over. Steve’s wire thin frame filled out the large sweater well enough, the sleeves pushed up to reveal two fully tattooed arms, a little shorter than her and a nervous tick of bouncing his leg like he was ready to jump at the first word.

He looks so much younger than she feels, caught in a strange place of being an adult but not quite adult _enough_.

“I-” she sighed “sorry. Not a boy. You're a man.” Darcy sighs again a little dreamily and full of wistfulness. “I just feel so old, so worn, ya know? A little bitter I guess. Thought I salted the ground of Hydra only to have it come up through the roots.”  
Steve’s jaw clenches and then released. He abandons the notebook and blue eyes meet their mirrored image.

“It wasn't your fault.”

Darcy snorts turning away from his gaze, too honest and too open (did hers still have that same light?), and opted to lean heavily on the counter.

“No, seriously, I don't think anyone has said it but-” Steve makes a noise of frustration. “You wanted to do the right thing. You sunk that aircraft because it was your life or potentially millions; you took down SHIELD because people were going to die. Jane was on that list, shit, _I was on that list_.”

Darcy looks down and bites her lip. “But I couldn't save everyone.”

There’s an echo of silence and Darcy sniffles a little, holding in her tears.

“Howard Stark used to say-” Steve paused “he used to say that you weren't a perfect soldier. You made mistakes, you were stubborn, and prone to throw orders to the wind. He said that Erkinstine picked you because you weren't the perfect soldier, but a good woman.”

They sit in a silence for a moment, Steve politely handing her a box of tissues when she starts swiping at the corners of her eyes, she clears her throat and does her best to compose herself.

“So, um, what are your questions again?”

Steve looks down at his notebook before pushing it away.  
“Tell me about Darcy Lewis, the woman. Not the icon.”

  
They got coffee often, Darcy taking delight in the new flavors and ways that coffee could be consumed. Some she liked, others she drank in very small sips as if dreading the next. She wouldn't say it, but Steve could tell when she crinkles her nose and the slight pucker around the edges of her lips.

Sometimes, she’ll read and let him doodle on her arms and practice freehand work. Other times, Darcy will watch him draw for hours at a time and ask him questions about how he got into tattooing and art school.  
Her eyes always dancing over the ink that covers his arms, finger tips tracing the line work or circling swirls of color.

Introducing Darcy to the modern world is something of an unexpected joy, when Steve has the free time. Who knew Captain America would enjoy binge watching shows and eating frozen nutter butters?

She calls him on FaceTime from her brand new iPhone, texts him pictures of kittens from the Internet, and Steve has to wonder how she has so much joy in things that others found mundane.

When they go out, they compare notes from the New York of today to the New York of past, both natives talking about what used to be in a spot, what was new or what had been remodeled.

It’s always a rare occasion when they don't hear the click of camera shutters. Steve always steps in front of her when as soon as he notices photographers hanging around. He’ll engage them in conversation for a bit as she ducks into a shop and slides on her huge sunglasses with one of his sweaters to sneak around them without being noticed. It’s a good distraction technique and it works more times than not.

Steve’s barely making it home at half past 3 am from his shift at the tattoo parlor, jumping out of his skin when he notices Darcy sitting the glow of his TV. There’s a large gash right at the hairline of her victory rolls and a yellowing shadow under her left eye. She's wearing one of his old sweaters, but he can see the edges of her uniform at the sleeves and her boots tucked neatly under the coffee table.

“Hi.” It’s a little more of a squeak from her and she waves slowly. She winces as she shifts and Steve can guess that she’s probably fractured a rib.

“You okay?” Steve drops his backpack to the ground and sits on the edge of the coffee table in front of her.

Darcy shrugs but her hands shake as he takes them in his own. She shrugs again and he can see tears sitting on her lashes before she shakes her head slowly.

He opens his arms and that's all it takes as she bows her head onto his shoulder. Her shoulders shake and he feels like he can hear the boulders tumbling off of them with each sob.

Thin arms wrap round her, grounding, warm and real. Her hair smells slightly burnt and she’s shaking like a leaf. The collar of his shirt sticks to his skin with tears that slowly subside.  
He doesn't say anything as he sways them back and forth gently, rubbing her back. Her breathing evens and Steve slowly moves so that they’re both resting on the couch. Darcy rests her head on his lap as he draws a throw blanket over her. She forces herself to follow his breathing as he plucks the pins from her hair, gently combing his hands through her hair, massaging her scalp.  
Her shoulders jump and she bites out “Fu- _hic_ -kin hiccups.”

Steve snorts and they both settle down. “I could spring for pizza?”

“I’ve got some bills in my boots.”  
Steve nods, stretching down as much as possible without leaving the couch, his pinky finger catching the lip of her boot and tugging it towards him. Tapped to the inside of her boot os about fifty dollars, and he takes about thirty knowing how much pizza she’ll eat.

“There has to be a better way to carry around your money.” Steve grumps, nose wrinkling at the moister on the bills.

Darcy cracks an eye open with a huff. “Sure, but you're going to have to tell Fury why Captain America is fishing bills from her cleavage.”

“For the look on his face? Done.”

Their laughter fills the small apartment and hangs in the air as Steve orders their pizzas.  
She’s showered and smells like his body soap by the time it arrives. Steve’s lungs tighten like they do every time Darcy wears his sweatpants and a ratted up shirt. It’s not his asthma, much to his embarrassment.

Her skin has knit itself back together, but he still catches his hands inching forward to make sure.

Darcy gives him a wink and her blue eyes twinkle again as she sinks to the floor and opens one of the boxes.

He hands her a beer and then a few more as they plow through pizza after pizza. He’s a little warm and buzzed as she picks the black olives off of her slice.

She’s laughing as he tells her about Thor fetching him in the middle of one of his live model art classes. The God had loomed over the shoulders of all of his classmates, critiquing each piece.

“Who knew the god of thunder was such a critic?” His barking laugh fills the room and they sag into each other.

“Bucky, Pegs, and I used the shield as a sled once.” Darcy whispers it like a secret, her ocean eyes glittering with joy.

“You’re fucking me?” Steve snorts and she shakes her head fiercely.

“Nooope! It was snowing in some field in Germany,” her voice is wistful as she peels the label off his beer. “I remember the kids with money having sleds and going down the hills. Buck and I never had more than a busted up trash can lid. It was my idea of course, and damn, did we go fast.” She dissolves into a fit of giggles. “Peggy was so mad at us that we had to sleep floor for weeks! Bucky busted up his eyebrow real bad, pouted the whole time in the med tent. Then two weeks later, I catch her and Buck smuggling the shield to go loping down some hills.”

"Sounds like you miss ‘em.”

Darcy shrugs again, curling further into his arms. “Future ain’t so bad.”

And maybe he should have made a move, but this moment? It ain’t so bad either.


	4. Sketches of Sunday

In another life, another time, another place, they meet at a diner. His knees crammed under the short tables as she whisks by with a tray full of pies.  
He’s drawing, he can't seem to stop filling notebook after notebook with sketches of this strange new world. He’s just so in awe of everything he sees. Sometimes he doodles on napkins, abandoning them when he leaves, but he’s started to notice that they get tacked to the little cork board behind the counter.

Steve comes in often enough to where the servers start dropping off coffee to his table and a glass of ice water, just in case.  
Truth be told, no one ever seems to mind that he stays. Leaning over to look at doodles of cups and saucers or drawings of the servers on their roller skates.  
Eloise, Claudia, Chandler, Misty, and Darcy; he draws all of them and tucks a twenty under his cup when he goes. It’s a bit much for coffee, but they never question or pester him when comes in with bruises and leaves without them. Plus Mrs. Russo’s grandkid blew his cover when he dashed over with a shield and apple pie, but he figures they knew anyway.

Claudia, with her kind eyes and heart, always lending a hand or making him her abuela’s hot chocolate on her rough days.

Eloise and Chandler’s synchronization; doing tricks on their roller skates when the shop was empty, pulling funny faces from across the dinner to each other to keep spirits high.

Misty singing to the radio, memorizing lines and scripts over by the the coffee machine.

They tease him good naturedly about how sweet he is on Darcy. Darcy with her quick wit and smooth curves, smart mouth and even smarter brain. The way she’ll drop a book off by his table, tapping the cover twice before heading off with a wink.

He doesn't think she knows, or she doesn't care, because she’ll make herself right at home in his booth when it’s slow during the school year and she needs to study. Sometimes, he’ll almost work up the nerve to ask her out, but she’ll get called away or heads off to her night class.

But it’s summer now, and the shop is as busy as ever with Darcy, Claudia, and Misty on shift.  
Today he draws Darcy, or a caricature of her, sashaying past a table of guys around their age; Tongues hanging out, hearts in their eyes. In the next panel, Cartoon Darcy rolls her eyes and doesn't give them the time of day.  
He draws himself, or how he used to be, sitting at the booth stammering as the cartoon siren brought a slice. The last panel has him sighing in defeat as she walks away.

It’s not completely true, as Darcy gives him an enthusiastic wave as he leaves the store, but the shy awkward wave he sends back has him ducking his head like a shy school kid.

He comes back the next day and it’s blissfully slow as Claudia pats him on the shoulder.  
It feels almost like any other day as he knocks his knees on the edge of the table, orders a yet another coffee, and sets out to do more sketching, but Darcy slides into the booth across from him. Not unusual, but she reaches into her bag and slaps a piece of napkin onto the table.  
She smiles and slides over his doodle from yesterday before opening a textbook and going to work.

Curiously he looks over the drawing and the last panel that had been added.

It showed Darcy looking flustered and scattered, breathing hard and hiding behind the swinging door of the kitchen.  
It makes him snort and smile softly.

And there, in between the silence and coffee, he doesn't feel like the man out of time.  
He’s here, right now, and right on time.

There’s hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I will update once a week and there will be six chapters.  
> I know and understand that each chapter could be it's own universe, but I have a set up in mind.  
> You can find me over on tumblr as canibecandid! :)


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